


let redemption keep you warm

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Accidental Death, Dark, Gen, Medical Inaccuracies, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Witnessed Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 17:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15151997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: Matt killed someone.He’s a killer.





	let redemption keep you warm

**Author's Note:**

> See endnotes for TW/CWs.
> 
> Title from Unholy War by Jacob Banks.

 

Matt’s curled up in his bed, still in his Daredevil suit. It wraps around him like a chain he should choke himself with; like a blanket that should weigh him into nightmarish sleep. He’s not crying, and he’s not even shaking. He’s just existing, off-kilter, because now he’s not sure he’s got any right to be. He should pray, but doesn't want to. His heart is beating quickly in his chest, and it’s all he can hear, the persistent reminder that he is carrying on in spite of it all. He can taste tenacious blood on his lips that just won’t go away, no matter how many times he licks.

There’s a knock at his door. He knows it’s Foggy. He can smell his aftershave, his shampoo, conditioner, body wash, moisturiser, detergent, fabric softener. Under all the chemicals is familiar sweat and human-smell that Matt is too used to to find disgusting. Foggy's heart is thumping in his chest, a few beats per minute quicker than usual. Worried. Anxious. Foggy always was a worrier.

“Matt?” Foggy says. He doesn’t say it loudly, because he knows he doesn’t have to. Brains are always looking out for their owner’s names. It’s a sort of egotism, or desperation, wishing that somebody else would acknowledge your existence without prompting. Matt knows his brain is always tuned into Foggy, his baseline, his true north.

Matt’s never felt more lost, more fucking alien. He ignores the knocking.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The guy smells of cigarettes (Marlboro, probably; poor man’s rich) and sea salt spray and river grime. Matt doesn’t mind the heady, sweet smell of unlit cigarettes, but this guy has one in his mouth, sucking down smouldering ash and chemicals. His sweat smells of tobacco too; it radiates into the heady summer night and makes Matt's nose flare. The guy is guarding a safe in a warehouse, and he probably doesn’t even know what’s in it, but Matt does.

Matt drops out of the sky and the guy’s cigarette drops out of his mouth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“One day, you’re gonna have to use lethal force,” Stick reminds him, then swipes Matt’s legs out from him for good measure.

“But it’s a sin,” Matt replies, black-and-white, leaping to his feet and taking a good few attempts to hit Stick back, landing only one on his bony shoulder. Stick's body creaks at the joints and clicks when he runs, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Matt hears it in a lot of old people, actually, but Stick's spryness makes it difficult to figure out exactly how old he is. Matt wonders if he has grey hair, sometimes. He sounds like he has grey hair, like one of those wizened old teachers in movies.

“You’re gonna sin a lot in your life, kid. Aren’t they all mortal sins, or somethin’? Fuck if I know. Anyways, point is,” he carries on, performing a rapid number of moves to get Mat with his arm trapped behind his back. When he speaks again, his voice is close to Matt’s ear, breath hot on fleshy cartilage. “You can’t knock some of these guys out. They’ll just keep gettin’ back up til ya kill them.”

“I’ll keep knocking them down, then,” Matt says, all the arrogance of a kid who knows best. He knows, logically, Stick has probably killed, and he prays for Stick at night. Just— quickly. Like the man would wander into his room, slap his hands and tell him to stop being such a pussy. He's not entirely sure if God is even still listening out for Matt, but part of him thinks that if he tries hard enough, eventually God will have to acknowledge him and send something good his way. Not that Stick isn’t good, but he isn’t soft, kind, or nice. Matt wants something _nice,_ even if he's ashamed to admit it.

Stick scoffs and puts more pressure on Matt’s arm, making him whine in pain. His arm stretches at an unnatural angle, and he tries to buck Stick off, but his strong fingers keep him in place effortlessly. Matt breathes through his nose. “You’ll get _real_ tired of that, eventually, kid.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt doesn’t open the door, but Foggy is by his side anyway. Right. Spare key.

“Jesus, Matt, what…”

Matt doesn’t respond, so it must be the pitiful sight of him that makes Foggy trail off. He curls in tighter to himself, hating it. He hates pity. It makes his stomach squirm in disgust. Foggy never shows him pity, but Matt feels it now.

“Go away,” Matt moans.

“Dude, _you_ texted _me_ ,” Foggy says. Did he? Matt barely remembers. His brain is smothered right now in Marlboro cigarette smoke and a cloud of inertia. “C’mon, lets get you out of the suit, okay?”

“Can’t,” Matt says.

“What? Why? Are you hurt - should I call Claire?”

Matt shakes his head, twists his face into his pillows that smell like his own hair and skin. “If I take it off, I’m Matt again,” he says, voice muffled. He shouldn't have gotten into bed. Lazy. _Stupid._ Now it'll smell of faux leather and blood.

“God,” Foggy whispers. “What happened, Matty?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jack slumps in the chair, holds a bag of frozen peas against his swollen face. In the dim overhead light of the grotty kitchen, his eyes look extra tired, extra hollow, all the creases and lines and scars of his face amplified like he was carved out of the unforgiving darkness.

“You done all your homework?” Jack says after a moment, his voice thick, full of accent and personality. Some kid at school once said that his mom said that Jack sounded like he'd never even been to school. It stings, because Jack said he dropped out of school when he was fourteen to go work at the docks and focus on his boxing career and because his ma wasn't doing so well, so they needed the extra money.

“Yeah,” Matt says. He fidgets, his fingers picking at the skin by his nails. He rips up a bit of insensate flesh, then smooths it down before he makes it bleed. “Are you alright?”

Jack hisses, and Matt’s worried he’s upset him for a moment. “Yeah, Matty. I’m good.”

Matt's feet kick at the air anxiously. He's worried that maybe he's done something to upset his dad. “You just haven’t said much.”

Jack meets his gaze, shuffles the peas about to cool them down again. He puts on a brave face. “It just wasn’t a good match, a’ight? Happens sometimes.”

“Why? What happened?”

Jack sighs, drops the makeshift ice pack onto the table. His hands are shaking, just ever so slightly. Matt averts his gaze. “I hurt a kid in the ring. He shouldn’t’a been up against me.”

“But - he was your weight class, wasn’t he?”

“He was, but he was just inexperienced and young,” Jack explains, standing up and going to the fridge, fishing out a beer. “I hurt him pretty badly. He’ll be out of commission for a couple’a months. It’s not good to take time off in this industry, you know that.”

Matt is, obviously, immediately on his dad’s side. “He stepped into the ring, just like you.”

“Ah, Matty,” his dad sighs, slumping back down in his chair and giving Matt a look he quickly drops. “That doesn’t make it equal. And that kid might’ve been paying his bills with these fights, like how I do. I’d already won just in hits landed, if I’d just kept up my guard. But I kept on going.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The guy’s cigarette hits the ground, butt first, tiny flints of burning matter sparking into the air.

“Oh, Jesus,” he says, and his voice is young. Not, like, a _kid_ kid, but Matt takes half a moment to take it in and thinks this guy is maybe in his early twenties.

He should be in college, or working on his career. It's unfortunate that so many kids get caught up in crime (the kicker there being that he knows, intimately, why they might - Jack's shattered pride and his cooling corpse lying in a dirty alley surrounded by cops who'll never know the half of it) but Matt has a job to do, so he'll do it. His priority is getting into the safe, getting the information he needs, and maybe talking or scaring the guy into going straight.

Matt gives him his signature smirk-snarl that seems to only ever come out when he dons the horns. It makes hearts pick up, sweat break out, hands reach for guns. He's landed in a squat, so he pulls himself up to his full height, legs shoulder-width apart and hands clenched by his side.

“Try again.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You gotta come out eventually, Matt.”

Foggy is sitting on the bed next to Matt’s comma body. His form and smell and heat is comforting, from a distance, but he shouldn’t come any closer, and he'd said as much through gritted teeth when Foggy reached out. The thought of being touched right now makes his skin crawl. Matt's body is shaking and he wishes he had a monster like himself to curl up next to so he wouldn't contaminate anyone else and could bathe in his own soul-grime. God, it's pathetic. _Pitiful._

When Matt doesn’t move, Foggy says, “Alright, fine.” His voice becomes harder, commanding. ”You gonna stay down, Murdock? Or are you going to face this head on?”

It’s like a dull pulse of electric to his brain. Matt’s legarthic limbs kick back online, system by system; toes and fingers, arms and legs, spine and neck. He draws it all in to lift himself off the bed, and the effort is monumental, a gale making a useless attempt to erode the mountain. He twists until his boots are against the ground, treads coming down on smooth hardwood.

“Get up,” Foggy orders, his heart pounding. He doesn’t like giving orders, Matt notes absently. But he does as he’s told.

 

 

* * *

 

 

At the orphanage, he hears a girl try to kill herself. He doesn’t realise what it is at first, not until he hears and smells the blood drip off her wrists.

He leaps up off his bed, grabs his RE exercise book for the pretense, and walks as fast as he can, everything tuned into her; her shaky, dizzy breaths, her pounding heart, the salt smell of tears and coppery blood. He arrives at her door and knocks rapidly on it.

“Kasey?” he asks. “You in there? I need some notes.”

“Fuck off, Matt,” she says under her breath.

Matt enters anyways, sniffs deliberately, the inhale coating his insides with blood, and says, “Is that blood? Are you okay?”

Kasey takes in a shaky breath. “Don’t tell the sisters,” she whimpers, tears welling up again. He crouches in her blood and acts surprised, then calls for help down the hallway. She shushes him, a hand over his mouth that leaves a metallic taste on his lips. “You can’t tell them.”

He has a moment where he has no fucking clue what to do, then rips off his hoodie and bundles it up, finding her wrist and pressing it against her skin. He knows someone heard his call; it‘s passing down the daisy chain now, kid after kid raising the alarm like fire-beacons. Then it reaches a nun, and her hurried footsteps are echoing down the hall.

“Why would you ever do something like this?” he asks, his voice shaky. The smell of blood is making his head spin. It’s making him think of dumpsters and gun powder and his dad’s cold face under trembling fingers. For a moment, he thinks he can feel the grit of the alley under his knees, but then he snaps back to it; warmth is seeping up through his trousers. He shifts, tries to get more comfortable so his thighs aren't shaking, but it doesn't do anything significant to help.

“Matthew,” she says, and he can hear her smile. “I’m just not worth it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s Foggy who takes his cowl off, eventually. Lifts it off his head, then pulls down the hood. Matt’s hair immediately falls over his forehead, so fingers that are not his own push it back and away. He can't touch his own face right now. He's still filthy.

“Okay, you’re gonna have to help me out with the rest of this, pal,” Foggy says, his tone light, but Matt knows he’s worried because everything about his body chemistry is giving it away. Unacceptable. Burden. _Helpless._ "You're giving the kink scene a run for it's money with this one, huh? Where hell is the zipper on this thing?"

Matt's throat works around thick bile. He's thirsty - he always is when he comes back from a patrol - but hasn't had anything to drink yet. Matt tries to undo the hidden zips and buckles, but his fingers are numb and uncooperative. Foggy pushes them away and takes over. The suit is pushed off his shoulders, then Foggy helps him peel it off is legs, supporting him so he doesn't overbalance, then picks the pile of material up and tucks it over the towel rack so it’s out of the way. Never leave shit on the floor - that was the first ground rule Matt established when he moved into that dorm room all those years ago.

Now he’s just a man again, shivering in his boxers and all tacky-skinned as his sweat cools.

Foggy turns on the shower, pipes groaning as hot water rushes through them. Matt turns to him and the words come up out of his throat and through his mouth before he can even think about it. “I killed someone.”

Foggy freezes, his heartbeat roaring in Matt’s ears. “Oh,” he whispers.

“I didn’t mean to,” Matt says miserably. “You can leave, if you want.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Look, how old are you? Twenty?” Matt asks, hoping his guess isn't wildly out because it'd give him away. The guy shuffles, asphalt crunching underfoot. He's close, then. “Just leave. Your boss won’t know. I don’t want to fight you.”

The guy pulls out a gun that Matt already knew he had. “I’ll shoot you, man.” His heartbeat doesn't necessarily betray a lie, but Matt can hear it loud and clear in his voice that he's not sure he'd go through with it. Indecision Matt can work with.

Matt gives a cocksure head tilt. “Okay. You ever shot someone before? Make sure you’re not too tense. I hear the kickback can hurt.”

The kid aims the pistol, cocking it up. It’s not aiming quite right to hit Matt, a little off centre. Matt can hear the sweat between his palm and the metal of the handle. “My boss says this is important.”

Matt gives an exasperated snort. “Do you _really_ care that much about your boss?”

The kid licks his lips, slick flesh against flesh. “Who cares about their boss? I care about my career.”

“Your career. As a criminal,” Matt deadpans.

“Well I ain’t gonna be getting a real job, am I?” the kid snaps back. He sounds like a real Bronx kid, but Matt only hears it if he concentrates. He's too used to the melting pot of accents in New York to pick them out unconsciously. Besides, half the time he can't hear the particular quirks of a how someone spoke for all the other noises - phlegm, vocal cords, wet flesh, tongues and teeth and saliva. “I don’t got a GED.”

“You could always go back to sc—“

“Man, what the hell are you, a fucking counsellor? Jesus. Shut the fuck up, get outta here, before I shoot you.”

Time’s up. Matt’s got places to be, and the longer he’s here, the more likely it is someone spots them and raises the alarm. Matt’s pulled his baton out of his holster, throwing it perfectly square and straight and true before the kid’s even got a chance to bat an eyelid at the turn of events.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Foggy doesn’t leave. Instead, he jostles Matt into the shower. “You need a hand washing?”

It takes him a moment to process what Foggy’s asking. He turns his head, hair plastered to his hair with water. It runs over his mouth and he shuts his eyes against it. “I don’t know.” Fucking hell, Matthew. Useless. Worthless. _Sloth._

Foggy just nods. “Alright, dude.”

Foggy pours some shampoo into his hand and rubs it into Matt’s hair. Matt leans into it, body slumping against the tiles. He can barely keep himself standing. He’s just so fucking tired and his brain is shattered. He doesn't want to sleep, though - he doesn't deserve that, and he's not even sure he could if he wanted to. Matt can smell the soapy water dripping down Foggy’s forearm and sleeves, but then it evaporates as his brain slides out of gear and stops paying attention.

“He was college aged,” Matt whispers. His voice echoes against the tiles, almost being drowned out by the shower. Foggy stops what he's doing. “Like how old we were when we met. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t,” Foggy says. His heartbeat stays steady - it’s elevated, but steady. He carries on massaging shampoo into Matt's hair.

“Why aren’t you angry?” Matt asks.

“I will be,” Foggy says. “But that’s not what you need. You’re alive, so let’s keep it that way. Tilt your head back and rinse.”

Matt thinks the explanation is bullshit, like he’s a suicide risk or something. Doesn't Foggy know that's a mortal sin? Like murder, like murder, _like murder_.

He tilts his head into the lukewarm spray of water and does as he's told.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt creeps into his room, nauseatingly drunk. Checklist - get changed, get some water, get some food. He can do it. He's done it a billion times before.

But he stumbles and trips over his bed, and ends up falling over the other side of it, crumpling on the ground in a mess of limbs and narrowly missing the bedside table. He lies there, face frozen in a wince.

“... Matt?” Foggy’s sleepy voice drifts from the other side of the room.

“I fell over,” Matt says, then bursts into giggles, the spell broken.

“You’re drunk again.” Foggy sounds disappointed. Matt doesn’t care. He’s too happy and up right now.

Matt hears Foggy shift around, and then footsteps coming closer. He’s lifted up and dumped onto his bed. Matt wrangles his off his jacket and dumps it onto the floor. Foggy picks it up for him and puts it... somewhere. Matt's stopped paying attention. He'll ask tomorrow.

“I’m so drunk,” Matt whispers, trying not to giggle again, smothering shaking laughs with the back of his cold hand. His cheeks are on fire, he's pretty sure, and his hair feels like it's probably lying all wrong, but he doesn't have the motor control right now to fix it. Who gives a shit, anyways? “I’m _soooo_ drunk.”

“How much have you had?” Matt rattles off everything he remembers, and Foggy sighs and sits on the bed next to him. “You gotta stop going to these house parties, man. You don’t even enjoy them.”

“Enjoy being drunk,” Matt murmurs. He does, too - it numbs his skin, first and foremost, so he doesn't feel all the threads of his cheap-ass clothes. He wishes he could afford (or justify) something softer, but he buys things to wear second hand instead so they're soft for him, even if the smell of the previous owners takes more than a few washes to get rid of. It makes everything taste better, smell better; it simmers his brain down into something more manageable, less scary. The first time he got drunk it was with Foggy, sipping on vodka Cokes in their dorm room, laughing their asses off to pirated stand-up routines on Foggy's creaky, comfortable bed.

“You’re going to them because you want an excuse to be drunk,” Foggy says. “You do realise that you can’t run from a breakup by being drunk 24/7?”

“Who says?”

Foggy think's he's just drinking to forget Elektra, but he doesn't know the half of it. Elektra stirred up this snake-pit of disgusting fury and something sharp, bloodthirsty. It tore at his morality until it begged to be let go, broken between the snapping maw of a beast that hadn't come out to play in far too long, not since Stick. Matt'd loved it and he loves her. But he isn't a killer, and she saw that. Fuck, it's Stick all over again. What is it with Matt and everyone wanting him to be something? Be kind, be polite, be sexless, be reverent, be violent, be ferocious, be a bone-breaker, be any-fucking-thing but himself.

“It’s not healthy. You know that.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Matt snaps. “I got--” He’s cut off by a hiccup, his diaphragm spasming uncomfortably. “Ugh. I got things to work through.”

Foggy snorts. “New Yorker Matt is out to play today, huh?”

“Nuns,” Matt says, then realises that’s probably not sufficient context. “They said it made me sound il-- _il-lit-er-ate_ so they gave me lessons on speaking properly.” He spells out each syllable to make sure he hits each one. “Bastards.”

Foggy bursts out laughing. Like that, the tension melts away. Foggy isn’t mad, and Matt’s long past the realisation that he’s way to tied up in Foggy’s opinion of him for it to be normal or good. Still, Foggy sees the best and the worst moments of Matt, and he’s stuck around. _That’s what being a good friend is about_ , Foggy always says, like Matt’s just supposed to know that.

“Manhattan's dying anyways. Gotta keep it alive somehow.” He means the accent, but his words don’t come out right.

Foggy seems to get it anyway. “Drunk Matt Murdock to the rescue,” he replies dryly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The boy falls backwards and his head smashes on the ground. Immediately, Matt realises something is wrong. Matt crouches next to him and the kid starts writhing, spasming, his breaths coming hard and desperate. In his chest, his heartbeat is wrangled and erratic.

“I can’t--” The kid’s choking on his words. “I can’t--”

Matt rips off his gloves and feels around the back of the kid’s bleeding head, and realises that he can feel micro-pulses of blood through his skull. Is it too much blood? Matt’s never felt around for a head injury like this before. He’s not sure what he’s looking for; the bone all seems intact even if he’s bleeding a bit from the scalp, so he’s not sure what, exactly, is wrong. Matt’s own heart is pounding.

But it becomes apparent that the kid is still struggling to breathe, and his heart is giving up on him. Matt pulls the burner phone out of his pocket and dials 911, then hangs up once he’s given his location. No time, Matt. No fucking time. You’ve got a job to do, or it’s all for naught.

“I’ll be back,” he promises. “Just-- keep breathing, okay? I’ll be back.”

Matt sprints off to the safe, cracks it open, all the while the boy’s heart becomes weaker and weaker. Christ. Christ, Matt doesn’t know what to do. He steals the notebook he needs out of the safe and is back by the boy’s side as soon as possible, hands hovering above his head. He doesn’t want to move him, in case of-- some sort of-- spinal injury? Matt doesn’t know. The kid seems like he might be seizuring. Matt realises, too late, that he should’ve just phoned Claire.

It’s too late because the boy’s heart gives one last feeble kick, and then stops, spasming weakly in his chest.

Matt is frozen in time. All he can hear is the settling blood, the body shutting down.

CPR, Matthew. Jesus, you really _are_ fucking useless, aren’t you?

Matt leaps into action, and begins pumping down desperately on the kid’s chest. Ribs creak and snap under his hands, mushy flesh squirming under the pressure. One, two, three, four-- five, six, seven, eight. He’s not sure how many you’re supposed to do - twenty, maybe? He does that and then pinches the kid’s nose, exhales into his mouth. He tastes of smoke, and Matt can still smell the cigarette. It’s gone out, but that just makes the ash smell stale. Matt realises that he’s crying, hot tears building under the mask.

God, he’s really-- he’s _really_ fucked it up.

Next time he goes in for mouth-to-mouth, there’s blood on the kid’s lips and it sticks to Matt’s skin.

Then, finally, he hears ambulance sirens cutting through the noise of Manhattan he knows are for him. For the kid. The _kid_ he just killed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Foggy helps him dress, then goes digging through Matt’s medicine tin. It’s one of the only things Matt managed to salvage when his dad died; most of their bare belongings were trashed if they couldn’t fit into the trunk where Matt now kept his Daredevil suit. “No sleeping aids?”

“Don’t like them,” Matt says.

“Want some tea, then?” Foggy asks.

“No,” Matt says.

Foggy rubs a hand over his face, his skin dry-sounding. “Okay, well, you gotta have something.”

“Don’t want anything,” Matt says. He shuffles over to the couch and collapses on it, curling up again on his side. He reaches down to his ankles and tucks his sweats into his socks, because he likes it like that. Then he feels guilty for indulging, so he rips them out and tightens up his body until it strains. He lets himself release once he starts trembling. He doesn’t want to worry Foggy.

“When did you last eat?”

Matt shrugs. “I guess I had dinner at around six.”

“Any leftovers?” Foggy opens the fridge and starts rummaging around.

“Yeah.”

“Want some?”

“No.”

Foggy makes a frustrated noise. Matt knows he probably sounds a bit petulant, but Foggy doesn’t understand. He shouldn’t eat right now. “Okay. How about a protein shake?”

Matt doesn’t like the taste of them, but they make it easier to maintain his body. Yeah. That’d do. He’ll eat half of it, to appease Foggy. “Please,” he says. Then: “You can go, you know.” He knows he’s already said it, but Foggy is loyal and the sort of person who struggles to say no.

“I don’t want to. You need help right now.”

“You should call the police,” Matt mumbles.

Foggy slams the flask on Matt’s counter. The loud, snapping noise makes Matt wince. Foggy breathes harshly through his nose, then exhales slowly through his mouth. Matt thinks for a moment that he’s had enough and cringes. “Yeah, _probably_ , buddy. But I chose to stay friends with a vigilante and I should’ve known this’d happen sooner or later. You’re saying it was a mistake, and I want to believe that, so I don’t want the details.” Foggy picks up movement again; starts going through the motions of making up the shake. “I’d rather live in a fantasy for the time being.”

Matt knows what he’s saying. _I’ll help, but don’t involve me._  He’s saying _I’m okay now, but I might not be later._ He’s saying _I’m here for you until I think this through._ It’s fair. It’s more than fair. It's more than Matt deserves.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt stays by the kid’s side, pumping his heart for him until burdened tyres crunch on the ground and the paramedics swarm out of the ambulance.

Matt stumbles backwards to get out of their way and the paramedics pause at the sight of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen on the ground, propped up on one arm and a trembling hand pressed to his mouth. Matt’s arms are aching and he’s winded - _exhausted_. But then they’re over the kid, performing a rapid number of checks, and one of them takes over the chest compressions.

“What happened?” the other one asks, voice clipped. A woman with blood under her nails and coconut oil in her hair.

“I don’t know,” Matt says. “He-- he fell backwards, and I think there’s something wrong with his head.”

“Were you there when he stopped breathing?”

“Yeah,” Matt says, voice wobbling. He can’t even keep up his Daredevil voice right now. “I called 911 as soon as I noticed. I don’t know how long ago that was.”

“Fifteen minutes,” the female paramedic says, grimly. That must be bad news. He’s struck by the irony that for all the gangbangers, the rapists and murderers he’s wanted to kill, the first at his hand had been completely fucking unintentional. But the boy isn’t dead yet, or the paramedics don’t think so, because they they mutter between each other whilst they prepare a whining defibrillator. They might have been speaking in another language for all it meant to him. Matt realises he has to go, _now_. He’s already been here too long - how could he be so careless?

Matt grabs his billy club and the notebook. One of the paramedics tells him to stop and stay, but he’s already sprinting away. He launches himself up onto the roof of the adjacent warehouse and lies flat, hoping that they can’t see him. His body begins to cool down after the strain of the chest compressions; he trembles, violently.

The paramedics shock the kid’s body again and again and again and Matt bites down on his dirty gloves. He barely feels it through the thick material, so he takes them off to sink his teeth into flesh, desperate to feel something, hurt himself, _anything_. He wants to flee and he wants to punch a hole through the roof he’s lying on, but he has to know. He _has_ to know.

Matt doesn’t know how much time passes until the paramedics declare the boy dead. Matt wonders if they think he’s just like every other gangster they come across, killed by their criminal career. They prepare to move the corpse into the ambulance, and Matt lies there for a long while until they drive away, the sirens off. No need to rush for a corpse. Matt tries not to cry. He tries not to yell, or groan, or make any other animal noise that would give him away. Despite this, a grunt escapes through his clenched teeth, and he knows without a doubt that if he lets himself make another noise, he’ll start crying again. Weak. Useless. He doesn’t know what to do. He needs to see Foggy. He needs to go to church, see Father Landon. He needs to get someone to read through the notebook.

He needs, he needs, he needs. He’s paralysed, his brain shutting down. He can’t make decisions right now. He just wants to lie there, let the fog in his brain take over.

Jesus. _Move_. Are you or are you not Daredevil?

His jaw clenches. He picks himself up and drops down onto the ground, rolling forward to absorb the shock. Then, with heavy feet, he begins to make his way home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> TW/CW for suicide attempt of a teenager at Matt's orphanage, depressive thoughts, unhealthy coping mechanisms from Matt (alcohol abuse), Stick and all his assholery.
> 
> Many thanks to Pogopop for looking over this for me!
> 
> What Matt did was essentially a "one punch kill". The blow from his billy club tore the veins leading to the brain, which was then further damaged when he hit his head on the ground. The actual results of that & what it'd look like to sit by someone who'd had that kind of brain damage I mostly just winged, but he'd probably seizure due to lack of oxygen to the brain. Sorry to any medical professionals reading!
> 
> For those wondering - you're supposed to do 30 compressions to the beat of Stayin' Alive on the breastbone of the person. Then two rescue breaths - tilting the head back to clear airways, pinching the nose, blowing in, then allowing the chest of the person to fall - if you feel comfortable & are able (you are very unlikely to catch anything from rescue breaths). Then repeat until medical professionals can take over, or you feel exhausted. [More here!](https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr)
> 
> Thanks for reading. Any comments or concrit are very welcome! You can find me on tumblr at [sleepymoritz](http://sleepymoritz.tumblr.com/).


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